There’s a wonderful feeling you get when you put effort into promoting a progressive candidate for a seat held by someone who has no interest in representing his constituents. In my case, I have happily worked for a teacher of college history against the House of Representatives’ oldest member.

Our representative Ralph Hall took trips to the Marianas Islands with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. His expenses were covered by Abramoff’s client, the island’s promoters. He defended Marianas in the House, once insisted a sex trade victim wanted to dance nude, and insisted to the Dallas Morning News that had he known the source of funds, he would do it all again.

Even in an an area that has traditionally voted for conservatives since the Civil Rights era, the degree of rejection of ethics entailed in Hall’s case would seem to suggest that there was hope to elect someone reputable and bright to the seat. Perhaps that was the reason election observers were not allowed to attend the vote counting in our courthouse in 2008.

It’s not just questionable election official decisions that were working against trying to bring back the public interest   in the representation of Texas congressional district number four. Our trust was further diminished with our new paperless voting machines, the same ones that Diebold recently sold to its largest competitor. Through that amount of trust rot, my vote is supposed to be counted fairly.

Diebold announced last week that it has sold its United States voting machine division to its main rival, Election Systems & Software.

Given Diebold’s troubling record, it is hard to lament its departure from American elections, but this sale could make a bad situation worse. Regulators should take a hard look at the anticompetitive implications. And Congress, the states and cities need to push a lot harder for fundamental reforms in the voting machine business and the way Americans vote.

Diebold has long been the company that critics of electronic voting love to hate. The company has been accused of illegally installing uncertified software and of making machines that, at least sometimes, drop votes. The company raised serious doubts about its objectivity when Diebold’s then-chief executive wrote a fund-raising letter expressing his dedication to delivering Ohio for President George W. Bush in 2004. Ohio, of course, was one of the states using Diebold voting machines.

The combination of the Election Systems & Software and Diebold American voting machine divisions raises classic antitrust concerns. Election Systems & Software, which has also been criticized for making unreliable machines, would be the nation’s largest voting machine maker by far. And states and cities, which have long complained about the low quality and high cost of the machines, would have less choice or bargaining power.

A lawsuit against paperless voting machines has been filed by the ACLU in Texas, and the suit is working its way toward a Supreme Court that has a history of pro-business rulings.

This cycle, I will again be involved and working for a decent candidate to represent the area. Every inch of ground that we give up means more crooked systems and crooked officials that are harder and harder to dislodge. Eight years of a Bush-style government has entrenched this sort of criminal behavior in our executive branch, and it will take a long time to replace it with upright representatives of the public.

When I look at the causes that we must to win before that happens, it’s discouraging. But we must persevere. Every inch we gain is more space for democratic government.